Classic Chords #1 — The Hemispheres Chord One thing I noticed as a teen teaching myself to pick out the wondrous chords played by Rush’s Alex Lifeson by ear was that he used a lot of chords where the top two strings, the B and the E string were left to ring while a moveable chord shape, often a B major shape or more commonly an F major shape (but, not barre) was relocated up and down the neck, read on to find out more about the classic Rush chord and to hear a sample.
Classic Chords #2 — The Beatles Blackbird We all have songs that stick with us, the ones to which we’re the most attached, emotionally perhaps. “Blackbird” by The Beatles has to be one of those for me. The words are important, of course, but it’s really those chords and specifically the style and that chord at the top as he jumps up in the “dead of night”.
Classic Chords #3 — The Hendrix ChordThere’s one chord every wannabe rock guitar hero has to figure out at some point…we all listen to Jimi Hendrix, we all marvel at what he’s doing with that Strat, whether plucking it with his teeth or setting it on fire. But, what is it he’s doing exactly to get that special E-major power chord? Read on to find out and here it in action.
Classic Chords #4 — The Caged Chord Composer John Cage (1912-1992) is perhaps most famous not for the music he wrote but the silence. In the piece known as “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds”, 4’33”, which is ostensibly in three movements Cage instructed musicians, with any instrument or any combination of instruments and presumably voice to not play their instrument(s) for the during of the piece. Read more about it and hear my death metal cover of the piece.
Classic Chords #5 — Rush LimelightAs I mentioned, in Classic Chord #1 in my early teens I was chasing the dream of being the next Alex Lifeson, picking out the pseudo-classical intros to songs like “Panacea”, “A Farewell to Kings” and “The Trees”, later “Broon’s Bane” from Exit…stage left and rocking out (on a nylon string guitar!) to “Working Man”, “Bastille Day” and “Circumstances”. One recurring theme in Lifeson’s playing is the chorused ringing open strings of moveable chords.
Classic Chords #6 — The Beatles — A Hard Day’s NightPerhaps the chord that is the most distinctive and yet the most difficult to pin down as a solo player is the opening thrash of The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”. Everybody who picks up a guitar tries to get that chord, whether classical player, rock guitarist, 12-string player, whatever. Now, I figured it was some kind of Gm11 but with something extra going on. Find out the truth here and hear it in action.
Classic Chords #7 — The Manics A Design for Life I have a confession, I’d never knowingly heard the Manic Street Preachers until I picked up a set of headphones in an HMV back in the Spring of 1996 and listened to Everything Must Go, which had just that week been released. It grabbed me from the off, it was like post-Rush prog but with a gritty edge and shorter songs, but definitely similar lyrical depth.
Classic Chords #8 — The Nile Style -Ever since I first figured out how to do those funky flicks of the wrist to get the disco guitar sound I’ve attempted to get close to what Nile Rodgers does in terms of those chops; his technique is very different, unique even.
Classic Chords #9 All Right Now “All Right Now” was the big 1970 hit from the blues-rock band Free with one of the most recognisable but easy to fluff guitar riffs of all time. Unfortunately, for the budding axe hero, Paul Kossoff was not playing anything particularly simple on a single guitar in this song by bassist Andy Fraser and singer Paul Rodgers. Ostensibly, it’s just a standard A major chord with a jangly bit, but there’s so much more to it and overdubs to boot.
Classic Chords #10 — Mad Punk My band C5 rehearsing Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” last night and trying to get that Nile Style guitar part as close as possible to the original song. Basically, the chords are Bm, D, F#m, E, with the usual Chic cleverness of not playing whole chords and doing something neat with the transitions, so there’s a bit off hammering-on and almost certainly some 6ths when it comes to the D…
Classic Chords #11 — Brass in Pocket I’ve had some Twitter debate with Richard Perkins of Bath Guitar School who half tongue-in-cheek points out that this chord might more formally be called an Aadd9. The note B is second and ninth in the scale of A major and personally, if I’d been playing a C major chord with an added D not on the second string, as in countless songs that go from Dmaj to that version of the chord.
Classic Chords #12 — Message in a Bottle The Police were a post-punk, new wave band, but the power pop trio all had jazz backgrounds. It’s not surprise then, that they used motifs from that world in their pop songs. ‘Message in a Bottle’ from the band’s second album, 1979’s Regatta de Blanc, could have just been a standard pop tune if it had followed a relatively conventional four-chord progression C#-minor, A-major, B-major, F#minor and then breaking out into an A-D-E.
Classic Chords #13 — Purple Smoke in JapanAlmost every budding axe hero of a certain age used to play the seminal heavy rock riff that opens “Smoke on the Water”, from Deep Purple’s 1972 album Machine Head and the more exciting live version from Made in Japan. Almost every budding axe hero played it wrong. You can even watch Jack Black playing it wrong in the film “School of Rock”. For a start, Ritchie Blackmore does not use a pick on this track…
Classic Chords #14 Who is Townshend?The Who’s Pete Townshend was by turns a maestro on the acoustic guitar and a wall-of-sound man on the electric. Stacks of amps and speakers, his windmilling right arm, the leaps and kicks and, of course, the smashing up the guitars and hotel rooms in equal measure, allegedly. On the acoustic there was the high-speed percussive, expansive rhythmic strumming, the big sus4 chords of “Pinball Wizard”.
Classic Chords #15 — Shining Floyd I grew up on Pink Floyd…well I say that, not sure anyone who spends their time obsessing over music and guitar chords has ever really grown up. Either way, I used to obsessively listen to “Dark Side of the Moon” and worry about that line “then one day you find, ten years have got behind you” and the one about the lunatic on the grass.
Classic Chords #16 — Writing is on Oasis Wonderwall Perhaps one of the most reviled of busker songs is the 1995 Oasis hit “Wonderwall” from the album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The song is namechecked by Scottish band Travis in their first single “Writing to reach you” when singer Fran Healy asks “what’s a wonderwall, anyway?” Well, if he’d taken notes in Beatlography at school he’d have known that Wonderwall is the title of a film from director Joe Massot in 1968…
Classic Chords #17 — The Würm that likes to say Yes The classic Yes track Starship Trooper (from 1971’s The Yes Album) comes in several parts just as any good prog rock and/or classical music should. Parts i-iii are “Life Seeker,” “Disillusion” and “Würm.” It is that latter section that is the focus of my latest Classic Chord on Sciencebase.com. The chord carries a wonderful and yet seemingly interminable jam on a mesmering progression -nominally nothing more than a G major initially but so much more…